Have your say on a proposal to close Fletching CE Primary School

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Overview

East Sussex County Council has a statutory duty to ensure there are sufficient primary and secondary school places and is committed to working in close partnership with schools, academy trusts, the dioceses and key partners to ensure that the supply of school places across East Sussex is in the right location, is of sufficient size, is viable and of good quality.

The local authority recently undertook reviews of rural primary school provision in East Sussex. The main focus of the review was the increasing number of rural schools with small and very small pupil numbers. The local demand for places at those schools was analysed alongside the effect this is having on their viability and capacity to offer a well-balanced, high quality curriculum that meets the needs of their local community and makes best use of public funding.

Fletching CE Primary School is a small, rural Church of England primary school. The school has a published admission number of 15 and capacity for 105 pupils. The information and evidence from the review tells us that the school has been under-subscribed in each of the last five years and pupil numbers fall significantly short of the school’s published admission number each year. This means it is difficult for the school to be financially viable and to regularly have good outcomes for pupils. There is little in-area demand for places at the school.

On 24 June 2019 the Lead Member for Education and Inclusion, Special Educational Needs and Disability gave approval for a consultation to take place on a proposal to close Fletching CE Primary School with effect from 31 August 2020.

Why We Are Consulting

We want to hear your views on the proposal to close Fletching CE Primary School on 31 August 2020. We will consider all the views put forward during the consultation period before a decision is taken on whether to proceed with the statutory process to close the school.

We are consulting with pupils, parents and carers, staff, the governing board, other local schools and trade unions. We are also consulting with a wide range of other groups and organisations including early years providers, the district and parish councils, the local MP, the Church of England and Catholic dioceses and the wider local community.

The consultation period runs from 5 July to 11 October 2019.

The consultation document below outlines the data for Fletching CE Primary School and the reasons for proposing closure. You can give your views by:

Printing and completing a hard copy of the questionnaire included within the consultation document and posting it to School Consultations, Standards and Learning Effectiveness Service, Children's Services Department, East Sussex County Council, East G, County Hall, St Anne’s Crescent, Lewes BN7 1UE

Attending the consultation event - details of which are set out in the Events section below

Responses must be received by no later than Friday 11 October 2019.

Privacy: This consultation is anonymous, although we do ask respondents to complete an optional 'about you' section at the end. You will find more information in the relevant section. Please ensure that any comments you make don't include any names or personal details of you or anyone else. For more information about how the data will be stored and processed by East Sussex County Council please click here.

Consultation information

Read the detailed consultation information here or download the consultation document at the link in the Related section below.

UPDATE: 16 July 2019

Please note the Fletching CE Primary School budget share per pupil figure on page 7 of the document has been corrected to £5,220.60 as the original figure of £4,792.68 was incorrect.

UPDATE: 1 August 2019

The consultation meeting presentation and the questions and answers are available in the Related section below.